The chief of Germany’s foreign intelligence service warned that his agency has “concrete” evidence that Russia is planning an attack on Nato territory.
Bruno Kahl, the outgoing head of Germany’s federal intelligence service (BND), said in a rare interview that Russian leadership no longer believes Nato’s article 5 guarantee of mutual assistance will be honoured — and may seek to test it.
“We are very sure, and we have intelligence evidence to back this up, that [Russia’s full-scale invasion of] Ukraine is only one step on Russia’s path towards the west,” he told a podcast of German outlet Table Briefings.
Kahl qualified that “this doesn’t mean that we expect large tank battalions to roll from the east to the west.”
Kahl said: “We see that Nato is supposed to be tested in its mutual assistance promise. There are people in Moscow who don’t believe that Nato’s article 5 still works.”
[…]
While the war is still confined to Ukrainian territory, the German internal secret service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), has warned that Moscow is increasingly extending the conflict to western countries through cyberwarfare and espionage.
Russia has in particular taken to deploying so-called low-level agents to commit acts of sabotage, according to the BfV annual report, which was presented in Berlin on Wednesday. They are believed to have been deployed to plant incendiary devices in parcels, which caused a series of fires in European logistics hubs last year.
“We have noticed that Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has led to our cyber and espionage defences being increasingly tested,” Sinan Selim, vice-president of the BfV, said.
The west has too little spine, from Biden’s cautiousness to Germany’s gormlessness in daling with Russia. They have been attacking. They are committing war crimes. They have sanctioned murders on NATO territory. Attacked supply chains within NATO countries.
Where has real leadership gone.
Hey, harsh…don’t forget us in the UK. Lil putler sent his goons over here and killed people with some form of toxin and all the UK government did was tut tut at him. Cowards.
UK was the first to send tanks to Ukraine though.
Yeah but now they are renegging on a two sate solution and training Israeli forces.
You are who I ws thinking of. I havent been happy with you guys, shifting the torys and coming back in to the conversation with europe has made me buy british again. Ukraine support is laudable.
NATO’s charter is very clear on this.
However, it doesn’t stop NATO nations stepping in without the NATO banner above them, so you’re very right in a way.
London could have made more noise about article 5 when a neurotoxin ws used on their soil by russian secret service.
Queue Poland. They’re just waiting for it to happen.
Yeah and they elected a right winger as president. They are barely getting away from this right wing nonsense and jumping back in